The NHL lockout looks set to begin this weekend, given the lack of any news suggesting otherwise. If I was a player (yeah, good luck) I’d hold out until Phoenix freezes over, if that’s what it took. Gary Bettman, the NHL’s aggressive little commissioner, says no deal, no season. Fine. If it takes two seasons, fine. Bettman argues that the players will lose more in salary from a work stoppage than they can hope to regain. Maybe so; and hockey will lose more from conceding another victory to the game’s clodhopper owners than it may ever recover.

Here’s the main point: The owners are forcing this lockout because they’re upset at the results of an agreement they imposed on the players seven years ago. The deal they maintain they can’t continue to live with is the one they demanded the players accept after winning the last big bargaining confrontation.

The owners, with Bettman as their front man, won the 2004-05 lockout hands down. The players caved after a season of no paycheques and no hockey, riven by internal divisions that eventually produced the departure of Bob Goodenow, their chief negotiator. As the victor, the league was able to extract the concessions it wanted. The terms of the agreement are their terms. The conditions are those they set. Their cries of anger today are directed at a pact they crafted, and which they cancelled an entire season to enforce.

Bettman, unctuous as ever, insisted at the time that the owners needed “cost certainty.” The agreement they extracted from the players would do that, he predicted. Without “cost certainty” the owners couldn’t go on; with “cost certainty” the game would be saved.

So here’s Bettman today, declaring a position reportedly backed unanimously by the owners: “The system that was originally negotiated, in our view, needs some adjustments…“If it turned out to be too rich a deal for the first seven years, we lived with it, but I’m not going to apologize for saying … we need to adjust it.”

And: “We are paying out too much money.”

Cost certainty, it appears, wasn’t certain enough. The average salary, under the owner-imposed deal, has risen more than $1 million a year. The owners couldn’t restrain their general managers from continuing to offer the players ever-richer contracts. Despite the bevy of restrictions contained in the 2005 agreement, the GMs kept thinking up imaginative ways to get around them. The owners apparently could do nothing to stop them: Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs, chairman of the NHL board of directors, is evidently so terrified of GM Peter Chiarelli that he couldn’t block Chiarelli from signing second-year player Tyler Seguin to a six-year contract extension this week, at almost $6 million a year. Sure it came just days before the lockout and breaks all the rules the owners want to put in place, but what could he do? Since he can’t contreol his GM, he wants the players to do it for him. The NHL position is that the players should voluntarily take less money, to keep the owners from constantly offering them more.

Please. The stupidity of the situation is beyond description. And the players know it. As quoted by National Post columnist Bruce Arthur, they are clearly no bunch of muscle-bound simpletons, willing to accept whatever codswallop the owners dish out.

Calgary Flames forward Mike Cammalleri: “We’ve given money back. Our proposal has huge concessions. … “They just want to take more. Use leverage to squeeze more and see how much can I get out of you? It’s like the bully in the playground saying, I took your peanut butter sandwich, I’m going to take your chocolate chip cookies, too.” Buffalo Sabres goaltender Ryan Miller: “Our goal all along has been to work out some kind of partnership, as you can see in our proposal,” “What it really comes down to for me is Gary’s been running this business for 20 years, and so if he’s operated at a loss for how many of those years, how is he still in a position of leadership, or even have a job? This is a squeeze. And it’s got to be more about hockey.” Cammalleri: “Where does it end? If you don’t take it, you take their proposal, then the next time around they’re still going to have the same excuses, it hasn’t fixed anything. They haven’t addressed any of the problems that we know would make the league healthier. Of course they don’t want to fix those problems. Because they want to be able to do this again next time, right?”

Precisely. If the owners win another round, the players might as well disband the Players Association now and go back to negotiating one on one with the GM, like in the old days when Gordie Howe and Maurice Richard would sign whatever contract they were handed, and be grateful if it included a raise. No one starves in the NHL any more — that average contract mentioned above is $2.55 million — but the game itself suffers when such rank ineptitude as the owners display — not to mention their self-serving disregard for the fans — is given a free hand. Massive expansion to cities that can’t hope to support a team. Prospective owners with open chequebooks turned away — I’m talking Phoenix here — in favour of league ownership at a cost of millions. A commissioner who can brag about the massive rise in revenue while simultaneously insisting poverty precludes his bosses from enduring another season on the same terms. And another lockout any time they want a bigger cut of the profits.

It sounds trite for a mere wage-earner to urge multi-millionaires to give up pay cheques like those earned in the NHL, especially given the uncertainty entailed in any player’s career. But no one — either players or fans — is served by having the game held hostage by this small group of self-serving, short-sighted martinets.

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.